Professional Swift

6

Storing Data with Core Data

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Understanding the purpose of Core Data
• Creating a graphical Swift program for OS X
• Inserting new records into Core Data
• Fetching existing records from Core Data
• Displaying Core Data records in a table view

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

You can find the wrox.com downloads for this chapter at http://www.wrox.com/go/proswift on the Download Code tab. The code for this chapter is contained in the following file:

• Birthdays.zip

Since its introduction in OS X 10.4, Core Data has rapidly become an integral part of many OS X and iOS programs. It is rare for both Objective-C and Swift developers to encounter programs that do not use Core Data in some way. Core Data is frequently used as both a caching layer (particularly in iOS apps), as well as a way for programs to store its most important data. While Core Data is implemented in Objective-C and designed from an Objective-C mindset, working with Core Data from Swift is just as easy as working with it from Objective-C. This chapter is a primer on how you can use Swift in conjunction with Core Data to easily write data-driven programs.

This chapter assumes some familiarity with Core Data, even if you've only worked with Core Data in Objective-C. It is an introduction to Core Data from a Swift perspective and does not cover all the finer details of working with Core Data. Core Data is a robust framework with many useful features, and entire books have been written on the ...